The Guards

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

This is literature, not just crime fiction

A friend told me I should check out this book.I did.I was afraid I'd get hooked.I am.Friends tell me I now talk like Jack Taylor a..Show More »s rendered by the marvelous Gerry O'BrienI do.

This is a wonderfully written, humorous and touching story. The crime is nearly beside the point. I'm lining up the Ken Bruen books now and plan to devour them one after another.

The Killing of the Tinkers

Jack Taylor, a disgraced ex-cop in Galway, has slid further down the slope of despair. After a year in London he returns to his home town of Galway with a leather coat and a coke habit. Someone is systematically slaughtering young travellers and dumping their bodies in the city centre. Even in the state he's in, Jack Taylor has an uncanny ability to know where to look, what questions to ask, and with the aid of an English policeman, apparently solves the case.

What a waste

Ken Bruen writes wonderfully. Jack Taylor is a very interesting character. I get great references to authors who I've not read and will truly enjoy...Show More » And yet ... These stories are an unremitting slog through the life of a bad alcoholic. I really don't see the point in revistiting, time and time again, the depths to which Jack can descend while he's ruining his life with drink. It's so unfortunate - I love the location, I love the characters - I barely finished the first book and I could not finish this one.

The Magdalen Martyrs

Jack Taylor, traumatised, bitter and hurting from his last case, has resolved to give up the finding business. However, he owes the local hard man a debt of honour and it appears easy enough: find “the Angel of the Magdalen” – a woman who helped the unfortunates incarcerated in the infamous laundry. He is also hired by a whizz kid to prove that his father’s death was no accident. Jack treats both cases as relatively simple affairs.

Bruen does it again

In this latest Jack Taylor novel, Jack is back in Galway, back living at Baily's he's sober but just hanging by his fingernails. In the midst of thi..Show More »s comes Bill Cassell, one of the local hard men and Jack owes Bill a favor and Cassell has come to collect. Then he's amazed, all Bill wants from him is to track down a woman Rita Monroe who was at the Magdalen Laundry and long ago helped his mother escape. The Magdalen Laundry was a place for wayward young girls who had gotten pregnant, it was run by nuns and it was famous because the nuns imprisoned and abused the girls they were supposed to be helping. Jack's grateful that at least the favor isn't illegal but after not having a lot of luck Cassell's goons pick him up and Jack gets a lesson in what his priorities should be, however he isn't sure that the woman, he's looking for isn't what she seems. Jack has only choice to avoid ending up with a bullet in his skull, find this woman. Of course Cassell's motive's aren't what they seem and of course since it's a Jack Taylor book, you know there's going to be violence. In the midst of all this, Jack manages to sleep with a client's mother, goes to a good friend's funeral and loses his library. Sometimes it seems as if, he's just drifting along.

I love listening to this narrator, you can just feel the grittiness of Galway, you can hear in his voice, a man on the edge, having a difficult time concentrating because he wants a drink so bad and of course if not for Bailey's he's be homeless. If I have a choice of reading materials, I'll pick Bruen every time. Jack Taylor is the perfect ant-hero!!!!! He kicks butt and takes names!!!

The Dramatist: A Jack Taylor Novel

Seems impossible, but Jack Taylor is sober - off booze and pills, and nearly off cigarettes. One reason: his dealer's in jail. When that dealer calls him to Dublin and asks a favor in the sordid visiting room of Mountjoy Prison, Jack wants to tell him to take a flying leap. But he doesn't - can't - because the man's sister is dead and the guards have called it "death by misadventure." But the dealer says that can't be true and begs Jack to see what he can find.

The Dramatist

The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that "The Dramatist", a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack's refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he's maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss.

Standard Bruen fare full of J and Guards

Best was the sober Jack Taylor, worst was the portrayal of the Gardaí in ignoring obvious clues found with bodies and the non realistic ease that Jac..Show More »k had in getting hold of evidence.

Priest

Ireland is no longer the land of saints and scholars. Now, in an era of prosperity, the sexual scandals surrounding the church have caused its people to lose faith in the one institution that seemed invulnerable. But the decapitation of Father Joyce in a Galway church brings a gasp to the most hardened cynics. Not to Jack Taylor. Emotionally bruised, battered, and still struggling with the demon drink, he’s back in town, trying to get his life on course after the traumatic trauma of personal loss.

Cross

Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption - his surrogate son, Cody - is lying in hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer.

Sanctuary

Two guards; one nun; one judge. When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, PI Jack Taylor is sickened, but tells himself the list has nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery and alcohol's siren song is calling to him ever more insistently. A guard and then a judge die in mysterious circumstances. But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and stop them at any cost.

The Devil

America - the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: - but not for PI Jack Taylor, who's just been refused entry.Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an over-friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know rather more than he should about Jack.Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway.

If Stephen King were Irish, he'd have written this

Author Ken Bruen's crime noir novels featuring Jack Taylor are wickedly funny -- Irish wit at its absolute darkest. His protagonist is an antihero dis..Show More »graced former cop turned private detective, always ready with biting phrases and usually fighting a losing battle with booze and drugs. But he's also extremely well read, philosophical, loyal and even loving sometimes -- and does good despite his best efforts at undermining himself. I highly recommend the entire series, which starts with The Guards. But this particular volume, The Devil, can stand on its own for everyone unfamiliar with the others. Because in this one, Bruen turns supernatural ala Stephen King, where Jack Taylor literally is fighting for the forces of good.

Headstone: A Jack Taylor Novel of Terror

Evil has many guises and Jack Taylor has encountered most of them, and has the scars to prove it. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland that leave even the national police shaken. And Jack is especially vulnerable now that he has finally found love and happiness.

Bruen at his best..

In the latest of the Jack Taylor series Bruen brings back one of his vilest villains for final resolution. Quick witted ascerbic dialogue, reliance ..Show More »on his literary background to preface his chapters, and not a wasted word throughout the reading this book is a wonderful thriller for those of you who like your crime stories dark and riveting. Irish storytelling in this medium at its best.

Headstone

Evil has many guises. Jack Taylor has encountered most of them but nothing before has ever truly terrified him until a group called Headstone rears its ugly head. An elderly priest is viciously beaten until nearly dead. A special-needs boy is brutally attacked. A series of seemingly random, insane, violent events even has the Guards shaken. This coterie of evil intends to act as a death knell to every aspect of Jack's life as an act of appalling violence alerts him to the horror enveloping Galway.

Purgatory: Jack Taylor, Book 10

Jack Taylor thinks he has a chance at last to rest and heal from the myriad mental and physical traumas that beset him. However, after a skateboarder long suspected of dealing drugs to children is shot dead in mid-air during a public performance, Jack receives a cryptic message with a picture of the skateboarder, a clipping about a rapist gone free through procedural error, and a chilling invitation: "Your turn." The note is signed simply "C 33."

Purgatory

Someone is scraping the scum off the streets of Galway, and they want Jack Taylor to get involved. A drug pusher, a rapist, a loan shark: all targeted in what look like vigilante attacks. And the killer is writing to Jack, signing their name: C-33. Jack has had enough. He doesn’t need the money, and doesn’t want to get involved. But when his friend Stewart gets drawn in, it seems he isn’t been given a choice.

Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel

Jack Taylor has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Garda, is ancient history.

Green Hell

Jack Taylor has again hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him. But Jack isn't about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead he has taken up a vigilante case against a professor of literature who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues a preppy American student from a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick.